Teaching to Change the World

I bought this book for a class ... because I had to. Boy am I glad that I "had to". It is a wonderful book and one that every future teacher should read. It's an easy read, with tons of information that anyone going in to teaching should know to teach in America's culturally diverse society. I highly reccommend it.

This book does take a pretty biased view of teaching, but it warns you of this upfront. Teaching is inherently political and this book doesn't try to feign some mythical objectivity.If you want to teach with traditional, back-to-basics methods, then read this book to at least see the other side. Use it to develop your own disagreement. If you want to teach in a way that encourages students to create knowledge and think critically, read this book to understand how this is even possible, but also go find another book which takes the opposite perspective so you can fully develop your own understanding of teaching.Its true, you have to take much of this book with a grain of salt. But the fact is that there is no "center" to the politics of teaching, and there is no fair and balanced way to present any political agenda. The choice to teach in a traditional manner is a political choice as well.What this book lacks is a deeper description of traditionalist/conservative motives in the educational arena. Too often it glosses over the desires of traditionalist motivation and insituates consipiracy theory about the true goal of such groups' agendas. However, if you keep all this in mind as you read it, you'll learn some rather fascinating things.